The pool

Featured in

  • Published 20250204
  • ISBN: 978-1-923213-04-3
  • Extent: 196 pp
  • Paperback, ebook. PDF

I CATCH THE school bus home most days, kids kangarooing from seat to seat. Hard for a little bloke like me to get a word in sideways. So, I’ve learnt how to fade. As Dad says, you’re better at feeding the chickens than slaughtering the calf, Ian. Not that it makes heaps of sense, but I get it: I’m a wimp with a capital W. I let the world race at me… And I’m okay with that, mostly. Got no beef, get no beef. That sorta business. But with Sarah Kennedy – ah, Sarah Kennedy, eldest of the Kennedy kids, forever twirling that pink chewing gum around her shooter finger like a piano string strung around my heart – this whole no-name underwear shtick comes undone.

Sarah Kennedy. Shiny as the inset to a Dolly mag, I reckon she’s gonna be on the cover of FHM one day. When Sarah Kennedy talks, mark my words, I listen – and then I get thinking, say something funny say something funny say something funny. Laughter,Mum says, is the gateway. Dad reckons that’s a load of spunk: women like conquerors. Either way, I’m the punchline not the orator. Sarah Kennedy’s not just out of my league, she started a league where the concept of an Ian Spittle isn’t even recognised in their founding charter.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

More from author

Aca-lyte

Poetry Che Guevara is white and wearing a shirt  with his face on it, mansplaining Derrida or Adorno a hat like your grandfather used to wear though...

More from this edition

Songs of the underclasses

Non-fictionDiē was the best driver I knew. ‘When you drive, you stare at everything but see nothing. You’re inexperienced,’ he lectured. ‘When I drive, I stare at nothing – I can chat, I can sing. But I see everything. Parking spaces, jaywalkers with a death wish, doggies and kitties. And for hours at time, without breaking concentration. It’s like meditation.’ Diē’s love language included showing me footage of near-miss traffic incidents on WeChat. Each trip of ours decreased my risk of appearing in his feed. These hours became the most time we had ever spent together.

Interstitial

Non-fictionAmerican sociologists John and Ruth Hill Useem first coined the term ‘third culture kid’ in the 1950s to describe the experience of Americans who were raised abroad in a culture different to their birth culture. This term reflects the way children raised overseas straddle three cultures: the culture of their birth, the culture within which they are raised, and a third, nebulous culture – the culture they create through the way they learn to relate to each other. The third culture is interstitial, not an amalgam. ‘Third culture kid’ (TCK) is a term often used as shorthand. Many TCKs will have experienced more than one cultural shift too. Those with diplomatic, military or missionary families are often raised in multiple countries, and others, like me, will continue their travels overseas as adults too, exercising the global and economic mobility they know well.

Buy, recycle, repeat

Non-fiction THE TIP SHOP opens at 10 am every Thursday. By 9.50 am there’s a line at the gate at least ten people deep. There’s...

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.